You are so right!! This trend will continue for years to come. As long as you have middle and upper class parents who continue to drive the revenue stream, there is no way to stop this money grab. Irony is that the very people who fund this charade are, for the most part, parents with children who will NEVER make it to the big game. Only in Club Soccer do you see people buying into the whole "pathway to something..." bullsh*t. I have never seen a professional athlete from any sport that I am familiar with that needed someone else to provide them with a pathway to anything. Mostly just people or organizations getting in their way, on their way, to the big leagues. If there is one thing I have noticed over the years, it is that the unicorns make their own path and do their own thing. In fact, it is usually all the uptight do gooders screaming "don't be that parent" that are too blind to see that top talent doesn't need anyone to create a pathway for them.
There is so much broken with the system in the US that it is to the point where we need to scrap the whole thing and replace it with something completely different but I realize that won't happen.